Rs 1.3 cr raised so far for Babri Masjid-style mosque in Bengal’s Murshidabad

Donation boxes meant for a proposed Babri Masjid–style mosque in West Bengal’s Murshidabad have begun to overflow, their stainless-steel frames now emblematic of a swelling public tide. Through the night, cash-counting machines hummed steadily as volunteers sifted through notes and coins pouring in both offline and online — a spectacle that has transformed suspended TMC MLA Humayun Kabir’s initiative into one of Bengal’s most watched pre-election flashpoints.

By Monday, at least Rs 37.33 lakh in cash had emerged from just four donation boxes and a sack. Online contributions, coursing through QR codes from across India and beyond, had already touched Rs 93 lakh. With seven more sealed boxes yet to be opened, the total has surged past Rs 1.30 crore — a figure that, Kabir’s camp says, has “exceeded all expectations”.

The mosque’s foundation stone, laid on Saturday at Rejinagar amid unprecedented security, was deliberately timed for 6 December — the Babri demolition anniversary — a date that electrified an already polarised Bengal. Tens of thousands turned up for the event, where 11 gleaming donation boxes stood beside stalls handing out shahi biryani to nearly 40,000 attendees. Since then, locals say, people have continued to arrive not just with cash, but with bricks — symbolic offerings toward a structure that has quickly become a rallying point.

A team of 30 worked late into Sunday night, their counting supervised, recorded, and even live-streamed for transparency. The remaining boxes are to be opened Monday evening, with arrangements underway to move the funds to a CCTV-secured room and initiate discussions with banks for safe transfer.

Humayun Kabir — a political shapeshifter who began in the Congress, moved to the Trinamool, briefly defected to the BJP, and returned again — was suspended by the TMC just days before the ceremony. His December 6 announcement had embarrassed the ruling party at a moment when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was herself in Murshidabad for a rally on the voter-list revision issue. Kabir, incensed, dramatically walked out.

Now, he is preparing to launch his own political party on 22 December, vowing to contest 135 seats and asserting that the Rejinagar mosque “will rise at any cost”.

On the ground, the fervour continues. Even as political temperatures surge, locals say people are still arriving with building materials in hand — a testament to the project’s swelling emotional force, and to how a patch of land in Murshidabad has suddenly become the crossroads of faith, politics, and an approaching election storm.

With PTI inputs